When people have a desire to self-improve driven by anxiety, they often feel an overwhelming need to change themselves completely, all at once. This is fueled by a sense of impending disaster and a feeling of being fundamentally flawed. This mindset creates a negative relationship with self-improvement, where it feels based on self-criticism and not self-compassion.

If you approach self-improvement in a different way, it can create a feedback loop that helps relieve your anxiety. There is a tremendous amount of joy and calm you can access from gradually and successfully making very tiny self-improvements.

What makes this transformative for people who are anxiety-prone? Taking this gentle approach acts as evidence to your brain that there is no impending disaster.

Here are three strategies.

Instead of trying to overhaul a major system in your life, pick a micro system. Examples: your system for charging your phone, running a bath for your children, or keeping your fridge stocked with cold water. Yes, this should sound very micro. That’s the intention.

Enjoy the almost instant satisfaction you can achieve from optimizing a very tiny daily process.

Imagine you are wearing a continuous cortisol monitor. These don't exist, but in this imaginary scenario, the monitor records the magnitude of your stress reactions to negative events.

Your goal isn’t to completely transform your reactions; rather, it’s to react a little more calmly and a little more skillfully than you usually would, so that your imaginary stress monitor spikes less than it typically would.

Improving the way you learn supercharges your intelligence. Instead of overhauling this completely, pick one small way and see how it impacts your overall learning process.

Some suggestions: First, make your learning goal clearer. You can use the "5 Why's" technique to drill down. Ask yourself, "Why do I want to learn this?" Answer, then ask yourself "Why do I want to do that? Why is that important?" And so on.

Create a tighter connection between your learning goal and how and what you're learning. This strategy alone can be highly effective for making your learning more focused.

Another strategy for improving how you learn is to drill (repeatedly practice) the most challenging part of a skill you're trying to perfect. This makes learning more efficient and effective. A third strategy is to experiment with different methods of executing a skill. You'll learn differently from each method you try. For example, try dictating your first draft of something you usually write.

For more, this video outlines 9 learning principles. You could watch the video—but to save some cognitive heavy-lifting, when I used the technique, I added the video as a source in a generative AI tool. I then gave it two prompts.

First, I asked it: “Outline the principles in the video.” Second, I used this specific prompt: “How would the principles apply to learning how to [insert your learning goal]?” The output gave me several clear directions, including one that I found most immediately helpful, and several others I mentally bookmarked for the future.

When you try these very small improvements, it can change your relationship with self-improvement. It can make it feel much more about self-compassion.

And when you engage in this small, iterative approach to improvement, it reinforces the sense that you're not fundamentally flawed and that there’s not an impending disaster. This frees you from the stress of taking an aggressive approach, or the self-esteem costs of taking a defeatist one.

There is a lot of inherent joy you can experience by improving these little parts of processes or small parts of your day. It can help life feel like it slows down in a relaxing way, creating a meditative feeling.

© Psychology Today